Wood is a lifelong disease. The afflicted spend their lives in pursuit of maple, oak, fir, cedar, beech or birch. The diseased can never accumulate enough wood. Firewood in particular is a full-time pursuit — the collection, cutting, splitting and stacking providing heat many times over before the final burn.

The 2014 Ram 1500 Laramie EcoDiesel 4x4 we’re testing for a month this summer was, of course, pulled into service last week to assist with some firewood, in this case hauling home some mixed hardwood from my cottage property near Westport, Ont. As the Ram’s 5-foot, 7-inch box in our Crew cab was a tad small for the load, my 5-foot by 8-foot manpurse was hooked up to the truck, the payload for which is 1,470 pounds.

The EcoDiesel, rated to tow 8,950 pounds, wouldn’t get much of a workout with this 1,000-pound load, but it sure was easy to attach the utility trailer using the optional backup camera displayed on the Laramie’s 8.4-inch Uconnect screen. The four and seven-pin connector for the trailer lights is handily built into the bumper, and the licence plate lights illuminate the area when dark.

Towing the light load was almost unnoticeable. I suspect heavier loads will be equally stress-free, the EcoDiesel’s 240-horsepower and 420 pound-feet V6 ideal for towing medium loads with a half ton, especially when coupled with the eight-speed transmission. Our Laramie test truck also has a built-in trailer brake controller, with details beautifully displayed on a seven-inch screen in the main instrument cluster. This cluster can also show the transmission temperature, turbo boost and exhaust numbers, among other engine details. It’s the absolute best I’ve seen.

The seven-inch screen in the main instrument panel of the 2014 Ram 1500 Laramie EcoDiesel Crew Cab holds plenty of info.

Highway fuel economy, which normally hovers at about 8.5 L/100 km, climbed to 9.6 L/100 km while towing the wood home. When I did stop for fuel last week — after travelling an unheard-of 1,009 km on the EcoDiesel’s 98-litre tank — the filler head was, thankfully, not some silly restricted cap. Many diesel pumps use large nozzles for big rigs, and the Ram can accept large or small nozzles without the need for the special funnel that some diesel vehicles require. The capless filler is imprinted with DIESEL over green plastic to prevent the uninitiated from adding regular gasoline. The cost of diesel is currently five to eight cents cheaper than regular. After refueling, the Ram’s range to empty showed 1,078 km. The DEF gauge, after almost 2,000 km, has moved to ¾ of a tank.

After two weeks, I am struggling to find serious fault with this truck. I do wish the Ram had some kind of access step into the bed other than the side rails — an old man step, as I call it — since climbing in and out of the box on our Crew cab can be tricky with the tailgate lowered because there isn’t much rear bumper space to find footing. (Ford, GM and Toyota all have optional steps.) The tailgate should also be damped to prevent it dropping with a bang.

2014 Ram 1500 Laramie EcoDiesel Crew Cab.

Our Ram Laramie is equipped with optional, four corner air-ride suspension ($1,595), which can lower the truck 2.1 inches from the normal ride height in front and 1.7 inches in the rear, making access somewhat easier. The lowering can even be initiated with the key fob when walking up to the truck with groceries or the better half. The system will also maintain the lower setting while moving slowly, ideal for work on a farm or job site. The suspension rises automatically to normal height at about 20 km/h and will lower one-inch again to “aero” height after 100 km/h. Two raised off-road settings can also be achieved by the touch of the dashboard switch, with “off road 2 mode” raising the truck two inches over normal.

The air-ride suspension also affects the ride quality, of course, with the overall result feeling firm. Cornering is substantially controlled and rough roads are handled well. Noticeable, too, is the lack of pickup jitters that normally affect ladder frame trucks, making the Ram easy to live with over a whole manner of roads. The suspension also adjusted automatically to keep the Ram level when my trailer was attached — almost as if it were aiding and abetting the addiction to wood.

Follow our weekly series on the Ram EcoDiesel by checking Driving.ca each week.